Yeah, the atmosphere was
very charged
because you have to remember,
this was not only a first,
but it was a once in a lifetime.
There's only one time that you first go to a march.
And not only that was the first gay march.
It was the first ever gay
march in Britain.
I put on my Gay Liberation Front badge
at Blackheath Station and caught the train
to come to Charing Cross Station.
Walked across The Strand
to Trafalgar Square and saw a couple of people
carrying the Gay Liberation Front banner.
People were dressed in such a way that you couldn't
necessarily tell who was male and who was female.
So we clambered onto this stage
and there were women kissing women, women kissing
men, men kissing men, men kissing women on that stage
in full view of the public
and a lot of police officers.
And we thought, let's confront them and
make an issue out of this.
And did our kiss, clambered down
and started our march from Trafalgar Square.
The morning of the Pride march was really exciting.
And I got up with my girlfriend, Gaby Charing.
We put on our Gay Liberation Front badges,
got onto the tube, held hands,
got there and joined the march.
I think it was very
important for those of us who felt we could
to wear the Gay Liberation Front badge
and make it obvious that we were gay
because so many people couldn't.
Married lesbians
for instance, would,
if they started wearing a Gay Liberation Front badge
they’d immediately lose custody of their children.
So it was very important for us that could do it
to show that gay was good.
Gay was angry. Gay was valid.
Gay was not a sickness.
Gay indeed perhaps showed the way forward.
London Pride in 1972
was the first in the world to call itself Pride.
There had been similar events in the United States,
but they called themselves things like
Gay Liberation Day.
As I arrived, there were already on the plinth,
a group of Gay Liberation Front members
wearing gigantic industrial wastepaper bags,
each inscribed with a letter of the alphabet.
And when they stood
together, it spelt out the words: "GAY IS PROUD".
There were other banners
"Humansexuals",
"Homosexuals are nature's children",
"Gay is angry" and "Gay women's liberation".
We had a number of slogans that we shouted
as we walked along.
One of them was, "Two, four, six, eight,
a gay is just as good as straight",
which later became, "Two, four, six, eight,
is that policeman
really straight?"
The response of the public
on the pavement was very mixed.
A third were quite overtly hostile.
About another third were just gulping in disbelief.
And then another third were actually supportive.
They gave us the thumbs up, they wished us well.
Then when we got to Hyde Park and we had our kiss in
and shared weed and sandwiches in the
park, and men took all their clothes off and danced.
And we all kissed each other.
And I mean, the police just did not know what to do
because there was so many of us,
like, hundreds of us doing this.
They all looked a bit uncomfortable I thought.
At the end of that first Pride, we felt
we have done it.
We've done it this year.
We're going to do it again next year.
It's amazing to think
that what began as one Pride in London
in 1972, with only about 700 marchers,
has this year exploded into over 190 Pride events
across the whole of the UK with a million people.
I think it's important to recognise
that GLF did start all this off.
It's not really about us, it's about the movement
being recognised.